Too Good to Last
by Turrislucidus
Summary: On the day Willy Wonka closes his factory ... forever ... Grandpa Joe reflects on how he came to be standing before the now locked gates. 2005.


_I'd like to thank mattTheWriter072 for writing "_ Closing the Factory" _, the reading of which inspired me to write this one-shot. I hope you enjoy it. I'd also like to shout-out a thank-you to Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, for his guidance in the manner a taciturn creator might say goodbye to their creation._

 _I do not own_ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory _in any of its many forms, and there is no copyright infringement intended._

* * *

I knew it was too good to last.

I couldn't believe my good luck when I'd stumbled across Mr. Wonka's first shop. It wasn't even open yet. I was walking home, pink slip in hand, Mr. Wick's wicked words ringing between my ears: "We're downsizing old man, and that means someone has to go. That's you, I'm afraid, Joe Bucket, and don't think I mean anything by it when I call you 'old'. It's merely an expression. If it's any consolation, you're not the only one getting the ax today. Send in the next one on your way out, and have a nice life."

Whippersnapper!

Nineteen years I gave that daggum department store! Nineteen years! Nineteen years, without so much as a 'how d'ya do?' as they send me packing! I was as cross as an electrical wire, arcing. I nodded to the next man as I left, scowling, but not at him: he was as old as I was; maybe older. I could see the scam, so could he, but we'd never win in court against the deep pockets these monsters have. I left, hat in hand.

Anger leaving me despondent, I shuffled my way home, taking a detour to put off the agony of having to tell the family the bad news. And that's when I smelled it: Heaven on Earth: chocolate, and cinnamon, and lemon, and vanilla, and… and I think, cloves. Yes! Cloves! It was the cloves that did it. Cloves with chocolate? I looked for the source of all that ecstasy, and I found it. A little shop, up on the next corner. The door should have been locked, it was obvious the place wasn't open for business yet, but a knock got me nothing, and when I tried it, the door was unlocked.

"Hello?" I called. Empty shelves needing dusting were all I saw. "Any one here?"

"Heh, what?" I heard.

The voice, kinda high sounding, was coming from the back. Navigating through the shelving melee, I investigated, and in the back room, found candy making apparatus everywhere, on table after table, the jumble as colorful as it was delightful. I searched for the source of the voice, and found it in the funniest little man, young looking, he was, and dressed as if he were going to the theatre, but at a circus: top hat, ochre; frock coat, plum; gloves, purple. He'd ducked behind a table, as if he thought he needed it for protection.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I smelled the candy you're making, and… is this a bad time?"

"Bad time?" squeaked out my host, wringing his hands.

"Are you going to the theatre?"

It was late, on a Friday, and later still, with the detour I'd taken. They always fire people on a Friday, as close to closing time as they can.

"Theatre?"

I was getting no where, and he was obviously uncomfortable. I never should have intruded, but the day was so bleak, and those smells were so bright, the prefect antidote to rejection… but… "I'm sorry I bothered you, I'll go now," I said, turning to leave.

"Wait!" he called, after a pause, and me nearly through the door. "Did you like the smell?"

I turned back, but stayed where I was. He seemed happier with the distance. "Very much."

I could see him smile at that.

"Wanna try some?"

"Oh, boy, do I!"

And that made him laugh. I liked his laugh. It was infectious, and came from a place I wished I had ever been in my life. He danced around the table, all self-consciousness lost, rubbing his hands together, and muttering to himself, 'which first?'

"D'ya like chocolate?"

I nodded.

"Me, too. Try this."

I went to where he stood, and he handed me a confection whose perfection I wouldn't have dreamed of in a year of Sundays. I closed my eyes, and let my tastebuds die of rapture, as the chocolate melted over them, and made its way down my throat. He only laughed, and moved to something else.

"Try this!"

It was vanilla fudge, better than the chocolate, but only because it was what I had in my mouth now.

"Now this!"

I tried everything he had, and when that was done, I tried every one of them again. He giggled like a schoolboy. Come to think of it, do school boys giggle? What I mean is, he giggled.

"D'ya think anyone will like any of this?"

"Are you kidding? People will storm the ramparts to get at this stuff!"

"Ya think so?"

"I know so."

"Good," he said, folding his arms. "I wanna be a success."

He seemed to forget about me then, getting lost in his own thoughts, and I wondered if I should leave. But moving might disturb him, and he seemed in need of the peace. I thought it better to stay.

"How'd you get in here?" he finally asked, remembering I was in the room.

"The door was unlocked."

"Oh," he said, a hint of color rising into his pale cheeks. "I should pay more attention to that! Did you want something?"

Did I want something? His question confused me for a moment. He'd just given me a sampling of all these candy wonders… did he mean that? Did I want more? I'd wanted only to find the source of the smells, that was all. But was it? I remembered the pink slip in my pocket. I took it out; held it in my hand. It was wrinkled, like me. I'd stuffed it there, as if mangling it would make us even. The boy-wonder eyed it.

"You're old," he said.

"My old employer thinks so," I said, only mildly offended by his bluntness. It was true, what he said, and the truth wasn't half as offensive as what my old employer had done. "They let me go today."

"Because you're a bad employee?"

"No!" Incredulity filled my face. "They let me go because I'm old, and if I worked for them another year, they'd owe me a pension, and this way they can take my years and keep the money, and they did it because they can get away with it!"

His eyes widened, and I could see he was offended. His eyes were a funny color.

"Humph," he said, as if they had done it to him. "You shouldn't be able to get away with doing bad stuff, don't you think?"

"I do."

"Think? Or that not getting away with doing bad stuff is good?"

He was laughing again, and all I could do was try to get my tongue untied so I could use it to say 'both'. He didn't give me the chance.

"D'ya want a job? I'm not open yet, but I'm gonna be, soon, and when I am, I'll need employees. Can ya do anything I'd need to have done?"

My tongue was untied by this point, and hooray for that!

"Yes! I'd love a job working for you! Who are you? I worked in the big department store down the road, as a salesperson, in just about every department they have."

"Then, goody, you can work for me as a salesperson, out front, so I never have to see the people, I mean, so I can work on new candies, and my name is Willy Wonka."

"Joe Bucket, here, pleased to meet you, Mr. Wonka! How d'ya do?"

"Er..."

I held out my hand, saving him the trouble of saying, and looking at my outstretched paw askance, determining to his satisfaction that it wasn't a rattlesnake, with one corner of his mouth clenched in a frown, he shook mine with his, and I knew as I watched him pull back, that that event had been a special occurrence that would most likely not be repeated.

I was right. It wasn't repeated, but that was the occasion that introduced me to Mr. Willy Wonka, and that day, because I'd been fired, I was free to accept the job of my dreams. Who knew that being fired, would turn out so splendidly?

* * *

It didn't last, of course.

There was no way it could. As indescribably good as Mr. Wonka's candies were, as in demand as they were, there was no way he wouldn't have to expand his facilities. And expand them he did. Five years flew swiftly by, and at their end, Mr. Wonka opened the largest Chocolate Factory in the whole, entire, world, designed by him, and built in record time.

He took all of his employees with him to his new Factory; all who wanted to go. I've never met a man as loyal as he was to the people who worked for him. It was as if he viewed the relationship as a scared trust between the parties; but maybe that was because those relationships were the only relationships he had in his life. _I_ never saw any one else, at any rate.

He took us with him, and hired more.

* * *

It didn't last, of course.

The world is a wicked place, and as huge as the Factory is, there was no way anyone working there could know everyone else, the way we did at Cherry Street. I knew fewer and fewer of the faces around me. I was getting quite old by this time—I'd have retired if I didn't love the Factory so much, and that's not mentioning that the family could use the money I was making; good money, it was; I was proud to be contributing to the family effort—and Mr. Wonka had me working as a supervisor, with very little to supervise. I'd spend my days daydreaming, truth to tell, and Mr. Wonka spent his days dressing oddly, and being successful. He never did take that outfit to the theatre.

He was so successful, his fame spread worldwide, and when a certain Indian prince, Prince Pondicherry, wrote to Mr. Wonka and asked him to make a palace entirely out of chocolate, Mr. Wonka jumped at the chance. Who ever heard of a palace made out of chocolate? …But lunatic endeavors like that were like catnip to a cat to Mr. Wonka, and off he went.

The rest of us should have paid more attention, I suppose, but we didn't. The thing about success is, everyone wants it, and if you can't get it by dint of your own work, the unscrupulous of this world steal it. That's what Mr. Prodnose, and Mr. Slugworth, and Mr. Ficklegruber decided to do: steal Mr. Wonka's success. They sent in spies while Mr. Wonka was in India. They took whatever they could lay their hands on. I wish I'd known what was going on. I'd have broken their hands. By the time Mr. Wonka got back, the spies were selling candy made from the stolen recipes at their shops. There are no patents for candy recipes. Processes, yes; recipes, no. There was nothing Mr. Wonka could do, but watch these others take credit for his work.

It drove him mad.

Yes, that drove him mad, but our lack of loyalty, letting it happen, time and again, because we couldn't be bothered to pay more attention to what was important to him, broke his heart. I'm as guilty as anyone here. I admit that. The man's a genius; he can always come up with new recipes, but what good will that do him, when the people around him, the people he trusts with his life's work—the thing nearest and dearest to his heart—don't lift a finger to help him defend it? His success was our success, and we didn't care.

I know he tried to get past it. I know he tried to blame himself for being away. But when after he returned, after he discovered the Ficklegruber, Prodnose, and Slugworth thefts, after he put counter-measures into effect, _after all that,_ when he discovered that recipes _were still being stolen_ … that's when Mr. Wonka knew there was nothing he could do. It was like me walking into his shop on Cherry Street that day: the door was open, and it was always going to _be_ open. The only way to close it was to close the Factory.

It wasn't a question of being bankrupt. His candies were still selling—just not very well, in the face of these new ones—and Prince Pondicherry had paid Mr. Wonka handsomely for his palace. The Factory must have been paid for—don't ask me how—or Mr. Wonka would have had to sell it. The dad-blamed bank would have made him! If you ask me, it wasn't the poor sales figures that forced his hand—though I know that's what the whole town says it was—it was the loss of recognition for his work that he couldn't bear.

I still can't believe he went through with it. That Factory was his life. He did the deed at closing time, on a Friday. It's always on a Friday you get news like this. Without a warning, in the morning, Mr. Wonka made this announcement over the PA system: "My dear workers! Please be sure to take all yer personal belongings home with you today. Personal belongings not taken home today will be incinerated. Thank you, that is all."

The buzz was, he was kidding. In the afternoon, he made this announcement: "My dear workers! Regarding this morning's announcement, I am not kidding. Take yer stuff. The Factory will be undergoing a change. If ya wanna hear what, gather on the sidewalk outside the Factory gates at the close of work today. Please. Thank you, that is all."

My heart fell to my feet. This couldn't be good, and as I said, it was all without a warning, but maybe I say that only because we _still_ weren't paying attention. I never really saw the man anymore; hadn't for years, but the scuttlebutt around the Factory was that he wouldn't see anyone, talk to anyone, look at anyone; he hadn't for days; hadn't for weeks. He must have figured any of us might be one of the betrayers, and that would be a knife in his heart. I can't blame him for not wanting to make small talk with a person who might be holding a knife to his heart, figurative or not.

The work day ended, with everyone glum. The Factory never felt like that. I left with the others, and I waited with the others, dreading what he might say, cursing myself for letting this happen, for letting that trusting, preoccupied-to-the-point-of-obliviousness-most-times, addled soul, be taken advantage of in this way. Mr. Wonka stood at the top of the steps, his coat collar turned up, the brim of his hat hiding his face. We didn't need to see it. We could hear the crack in his voice.

"I'm closing my Chocolate Factory … forever. I'm sorry."

Tears sprang to my eyes on the last two words. He blamed himself! He didn't blame us! But he couldn't trust us now, and without trust, there was nothing. Nothing for us, nothing for him. As the crowd thinned, murmuring in stunned disbelief, I wondered what Mr. Wonka would do. He'd disappeared into his Factory like melting chocolate being sucked up by a straw. Standing there in the cold, I wondered what I would do; what we would do. My daughter-in-law had just discovered she was pregnant. How would we replace these wages? Hat in hand, I left.

Halfway down the hill, I looked back. The clang of the gates closing was haunting me, still ringing between my ears. The smoke had stopped curling from the stacks. More than the clang, that made it final. I could imagine the machines being turned off, one by one, or maybe every machine at once, by the guillotine of electrical deprivation: a master switch, hidden in his office maybe: 'on' to 'off'. I wondered that the man could be so strong. I don't know that I could turn off what gave my life joy like that. Why, if I were him, I'd crawl into my bed, pull the covers up over my head, and never come out again. I wondered if he'd make a record of this; I wondered if he made a record of anything that wasn't his candy ideas.

He'd let us keep our work clothes. I brought my fingers up to the oval logo; felt the curly-curl of the trademark 'W' embroidered in red; let my fingers trail across the rest of the name. This was a keepsake now. Maybe it would be valuable someday. Maybe, when that day came, we could pawn it, or sell it, and in the doing, Mr. Wonka might help us again. He'd helped us that day long ago, when I'd lost my department store job. That day had been near as bleak as this one, but it had turned out for the better. Maybe this day would be like that day, and this ending would be the start of another new beginning, a beginning even better than that one had been.

But that's just me, trying to keep my spirits up. My imaginings happier than my reality, I let a bleak, brave smile leak onto my face, an effort to counter my despair as I trudged down the hill. George would think me a fool, and my wife would 'tsk' at me, for being so fanciful. For once, maybe they're right. I don't see how what happened today could lead to anything good for the Bucket family in the future. Nearing our crooked house, I tried to think of a way to break the news. Maybe I wouldn't, until Monday. That's why they always do these things on a Friday: you'd be home over the weekend anyway. It's normal. I had two days to let the truth sink in: if we at the Factory had cared a little more, none of this would be happening.

Who knew that apathy... lazy, harmless, apathy, could hurt so much?

* * *

I knew it was too good to last.

People suck, thought Willy, and not just gobstoppers, or lollipops, either; given the chance, people'll suck the essence of who ya are right outta ya, and if my father taught me anything, he taught me that! Pulling his idea book from its pocket in his frock coat, Willy let it fall to his desk, its soft thud echoing his spirits. Leaden fingertips leafed to the first clean page, paging through idea after idea, all of them, like so many extinguished candles, greed's casualties. He could barely face this, this flipping through these pages; this flipping through his finished future. He was already fatigued from flipping circuit breakers, in room after room; drained by draining the life from his life's work.

With a sigh to marshal his flagging will, Willy pulled the well-chewed stub of the Ticonderoga #2 yellow pencil from its home in the spirals at the notebook's top. He licked the tip and wrote the date: February 1st. Then, each letter taking a lifetime, he wrote: 'CLOSED FACTORY TODAY'. And then he closed the book. And folded his hands atop it. And stared into space, his focus blurring.

Who knew, that doing what it took to survive, could hurt so much?


End file.
